Leader: God be with you.
People: And with you.
Leader: Thank you.
God is most evident with us in the Spirit of Jesus that guides our days. Fifty days after the festival of resurrection, but only 53 days after that awful night when we were unsure that we would ever see Jesus alive again, we continue to experience all that is new in the realm of god.
We see visions and dream dreams; we hear voices of ancient and modern prophets; we tell over and over again the stories of creation, the stories of Jesus, and we are assured that our faith is not in vain.
This particular story we tell for power and truth, a story that never gets old: It is the story of Jesus, just before he would be arrested and executed, having dinner with his friends.
Meals were so very important to him, an ethos of hospitality, a commitment to food. And we can imagine the din of conversation at the table.
It was perhaps a sacred meal from the start; some say it was the Jewish Passover. We know that people of various faiths all around the world share in sacred feasts. (Our Muslim friends have celebrated Eid al Fitr this past week, a celebration of life at the end of a period of daily fasting and nightly meal-sharing.) Some eat to remember, some to garner strength, some as an act of worship. Perhaps it is all three.
For us, this is our story: that night at dinner, when Jesus was inspired to make a promise:
He took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to everyone gathered. He said:
This is my body, about to be broken like this bread, broken in search of a new way. Eat and remember.
Then he poured a cup of wine, passed it around and invited them all to drink. He said:
This cup is my blood shed, my promise that the vision will come to be. Drink and remember.
This story we people of Jesus tell is of a meal that will not end – the foretaste of a feast to come, when all people will have what is needed, when all creation will be honored and blessed. That is the day for which we long, the day of which we dream.
This meal, then, is part dream, but also part “living the dream,” when we gather in all our diversity to share what is good. This is a moment of being in the realm of God. This is good. We eat and drink in hope, in love.
Let us pray:
Pour out your spirit, O God, on this meal of bread and wine. Let it, let us, be part of your vision, part of your desire for a world made new. Bless us, and let us be a blessing to others. Amen.
Leader: Now, come and eat. The meal is ready.
People: These are the gifts of God for the people of God.